With Funcom saying more than 80% of lifetime players have played PvE only, the studio is restructuring PvP, splitting the Deep Desert experience, and expanding player-controlled server options as Steam numbers show the game settling into a smaller but still active audience.
Funcom’s latest confirmed message on Dune: Awakening marks a major directional shift for the game. In its April 9, 2026 developer update, the studio said that more than 80% of lifetime players have engaged exclusively with PvE, a data point that helps explain why the next phase of the game is being framed around a more deliberate PvE-first structure rather than a simple round of balance tuning.
That shift is most visible in how Funcom is reworking the relationship between PvE and PvP. On official worlds, all PvP zones in Hagga Basin are being disabled, while the Deep Desert is being split into separate PvE and PvP instances, allowing one path focused on survival and exploration and another built around higher-risk player conflict. The studio is not abandoning PvP, but it is moving it into a more clearly optional lane. Something similar happened nine or ten months ago, approximately, where some areas of the Deep Desert were moved into a partial PVE while the deepest parts stayed PVP. That too was a controversial decision back then and a lot of players were up in arms.
The reward model is changing alongside the map structure. Reliable reporting based on the official April update says the PvP Deep Desert instance will offer materially higher returns, including 2.5 times greater yield for mining and spice collection, preserving a reason for risk-tolerant players to opt into combat-enabled zones even as the broader game becomes safer for everyone else.
Self-Hosted servers are coming – but do we care?
Funcom is also continuing to open up server control, though not in the fully unrestricted form some players might expect from traditional dedicated survival hosting. In its official private server announcement, the company explained that Dune: Awakening’s architecture is built around a larger World composed of multiple servers that share social hubs and the Deep Desert, meaning rentable private servers control a Hagga Basin instance but do not give owners full control over the entire MMO environment.
That distinction matters because “private server” and “self-hosted server” are not interchangeable in Dune: Awakening. Funcom’s current official model gives server renters a limited set of configurable rules, including Security Zones, Taxation, Sandstorms, the server name, and password protection, but it does not currently include an admin panel or character transfers. At the same time, it gives communities a way to reshape the local ruleset, including turning Hagga Basin into a much more dangerous PvP-heavy space if they choose.
However the more extensive change of self-hosted or private servers doesn’t seem to be planned or even envisioned by anyone at Funcom. That I must admit is a bit of a shame because even on its own, Hagga Basin is an amazing area and I can only imagine how it would look if players would get free rein to mod it as they liked.
Is this yet another case of “too little, too late”?
I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade, and I’ll just say more power to those who still enjoy the game. Personally, even though I’ve sunk many hours into Dune: Awakening, I still don’t see much reason to come back to it.
The ability to turn off PvP in Hagga Basin is not particularly attractive to me. By the time I started playing, only a couple of months after release, Hagga Basin already felt mostly empty, and I never encountered anyone in those few spots where PvP was enabled.
The initial Deep Desert change also encouraged more cautious players to venture out there and pick up at least some resources for themselves. It remains to be seen to what extent the Deep Desert instances – especially the PvE instance – will actually cover everything a PvE player wants to do.
That also raises the bigger question: what real reason will someone have to go into the PvP section, the PvP instance of the Deep Desert?
Why PvP Never Really Landed
The problem with PvP was not PvP itself. People do enjoy engaging in PvP from time to time when the stakes are clear and everything is set up properly. The issue was that many players who preferred PvE, but still ventured into the Deep Desert to explore stations, complete missions, or simply mine in peace, often ended up frustrated when they were ganked by players who seemed interested in little else.
Whether you consider that carebear behavior or not, it clearly removes the incentive for PvE players to engage with that part of the game. Personally, I never found it compelling enough to feel that I had to participate. What interested me far more were the game’s other strengths, especially on the PvE side — the way travel felt, both on foot and with the suspensor, and the way aircraft were used in Dune: Awakening. That experience felt genuinely unique and unlike anything else. PvP never gave me that same kick, so I largely ignored it.
I still log in to Dune: Awakening from time to time to refuel the generators and keep my base running. The only reason I have not fully abandoned it is that I still hope future content might be interesting enough to pull me back in. Perhaps this update might finally do that.
